TÁRKI Social Research Inc. is an independent, employee-owned research organisation that specialises in policy research in the fields of social policy and the social consequences of economic policies. This includes related data-collection, archiving and statistical activities. We recently increased our involvement in the areas of strategic market research and health policy analysis. In addition, we regularly contribute to basic research, in the areas of social stratification and inequality, and to the methodology of empirical social research.

GINI - Growing Inequalities' Impacts

TÁRKI participates in major inequality research in Europe: GINI - Growing Inequalities' Impacts (FP7, DG Research, Contract no. SSH-CT-2010-244592). The core objective of GINI is to deliver what are the social, cultural and political impacts that increasing inequalities in income, wealth and education may have? For the answers, GINI combines an interdisciplinary analysis that draws on economics, sociology, political science and health studies, with improved methodologies, uniform measurement, wide country coverage, a clear policy dimension and broad dissemination. The project operates in a framework of policy-oriented debate and international comparisons across all EU countries (except Cyprus and Malta), the USA, Japan, Canada and Australia.

In the project TÁRKI coordinates the working group for the Political and Cultural Impacts (coordinators: Herman van de Werfhorst and István György Tóth. The working group addresses the question to study the impacts of inequalities in education and income/wealth on political and cultural outcomes. Rising income/wealth inequalities, and stable or declining educational inequalities, may have severe repercussions on outcomes in the sphere of politics and values. Topics to be addressed by this research group are: (1) understand the impact of changing educational and income/wealth inequalities on various forms of political and social participation; (2) understanding the relationship between changes in inequality and legitimacy, and (3) examine the impact of inequality and values studied under (1) and (2) on macroeconomic performance.